Paul Orlando On Hong Kong's Startup Scene [Infographic]

Paul Orlando came to Hong Kong a year ago, ready to dive into the task of helping grow a vibrant startup scene. Orlando had already worked in Asia in telecom years ago and was familiar with the city. He knew he was in for a challenge but the timing seemed right. “When I visited HK again 2 years ago, I couldn't find anyone in the startup scene. When I visited in early 2012, I found lots of people to bounce ideas off,” he says. “It reminded me of NYC in 2008 when the tech scene there was just getting started.” Feedback from startups in Hong Kong led him to found the Startups Unplugged pre-accelerator, a 3 month program focused on workshops, mentorship and a demo day. He later also partnered up with Steve Forte of Telerik to create AcceleratorHK, an accelerator program for early stage startups focused on building mobile apps. The program invested US$15,000 in each successful applicant company for an 8% equity stake, and provided co-working space, mentoring, and other services and perks. Orlando also created a list of Hong Kong tech startups which attests to the growing number of tech startups in this gleaming city of 7 million.

Now Orlando is bidding adieu. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in Hong Kong’s startup scene. The simple fact of the matter is that Orlando recently got engaged, and he and his fiancee are moving to Los Angeles where she’ll be going to medical school at the University of Southern California. A man’s got to have his priorities straight, you know?

Recently the startup community in Hong Kong gathered to hear Orlando talk about his experiences over the past year, and lessons learned.

What Didn’t Work

If you look at Orlando’s time in Hong Kong, it’s easy to think that everything he did in the startup community was straightforward and worked out well. That's why he wanted to share some of the things that didn't work, which is something that few people do. "It's important for people to realize that we tried a lot of things over the last year and a few of the initiatives worked out really well, but we also had several other attempts that didn't work. Startups should always be experimenting with new ideas, testing them and deciding how to proceed. That’s what we did too.”

One of Orlando’s more curious initiatives was a “nanofund” wherein he would pay prospective entrepreneurs a small stipend of HK$1,000 (approximately $128 USD) to come talk with a group of mentors about their ideas, ask for what help they needed and then return later on to talk about their progress. He got many questions about the nanofund, but not applications.

Orlando also put together a group to do outreach to parents of potential young entrepreneurs. Many young people in Hong Kong feel pressure to enter into traditionally stable and lucrative careers such as banking or real estate. Being a tech entrepreneur is not generally seen as an acceptable or wise career choice in Hong Kong. Orlando wanted to make it safe for students to take the risk of starting a business by making their parents more comfortable. Ironically, while students were interested in the group, no one went as far as asking for the help.

“You want to know what else didn’t work?” asks Orlando. “Being too nice to the startups I work with. People like it when I’m tough on them.”

Tough Love

Orlando then dished out some tough love for Hong Kong startups with these words of advice:

Startup news like Techcrunch is great, but do your customers read these publications? No. Spend your time focusing on your customers. If you’re going to read the news, then read what your customers read.

Startup events are great, but when is the last time you attended an event your customers went to? Find out where your customers are and show up there instead.

You have better uses of your time than worrying why Hong Kong isn’t on any top 10 startup lists.

Stop waiting for the Hong Kong version of Mark Zuckerberg. If you wait for a Hong Kong Zuckerberg to swoop in, then you’ll be waiting a long time instead of building something.

Orlando spoke about “sexiness” being the scourge of the modern day startup. He pointed out that while many app companies go out of business without making a dime, the guy down the street doing an unsexy business working out of a garage harvesting scrap metal can be making a fortune. Perhaps it’s time to look at some of the unsexy opportunities for creating a startup. Thinking about the business side of things early on can only help.

Opportunities In Hong Kong

Orlando wrapped up his presentation by speaking on the opportunities for the startup community in Hong Kong. He spoke on the importance of the community coming together to help each other locate test markets to try out their ideas and gain validation, or information upon which to make a pivot. He voiced support for corporate backed startup accelerators, crowd-funding, and group sourcing design and development skills. He then issued a challenge to the startup community to work on bringing 100 new founders to Hong Kong every six months and expressed his confidence in the attainability of that goal given the lifestyle Hong Kong provides and the ease of doing business here.

Finally, Orlando used peer pressure tactics to unexpectedly get nine founders in the audience to publicly commit to release dates or other major goals for their businesses.

Although Orlando quoted Yogi Berra in his presentation stating “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future,” I couldn’t resist asking for Orlando’s own predictions about where he sees the tech startup scene in Hong Kong moving in the next few years. In his own words:

In the next few years, the HK tech community will grow to around five times the current number of people. Still a lot smaller than NYC, a similarly sized city, but much more of a presence than today. More from both HK people and expats.

There will be more investors in early-stage startups. They might come from HK people who become angels to diversify their portfolios or it might come from raising a few early-stage funds, or the easiest option: corporate-backed accelerators. Three startup accelerators will operate in HK in a few years time.

More people from other markets will discover that HK is a good place to run a business. Those who have a track record and are in a more stable part of their growth will find that HK is a good place to base their business and provides a good quality of life.

Around 20 growth stage US startups will locate teams in HK. Not as a gateway to China, but as a gateway to Asia and to international business.

Want to get involved with the tech startup scene in Hong Kong? Start with these websites/organizations:

I live in Hong Kong where I'm opening a branch office of my digital marketing firm MWI, which is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. In addition to Forbes, my writing has also been published in Entrepreneur, Fast Company...